


[18th floor balcony]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Domestic, Other, cottoncandy-bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:45:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small piece of more or less fluff (on the scale I write Natalia and Clint, anyway) written for cottoncandy-bingo on DW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[18th floor balcony]

When Nat gets back from the Stark mission, she walks into the loft they're sharing this month, drops her bag and drops the rest of bits and pieces of clothing on her way directly to the shower, face blank and motions sharp. So Clint elects not to say anything, on the basis that his day hasn't been much better. Instead, he pours himself more beer, sinks a whiskey-shot into it and drops on the blue sectional-couch beside one of the open windows. 

This is closer to a squat than a finished, polished, post-modern loft; the only thing that divides the shower from the room is a curtain more for containing the wet than concealment, and only the actual toilet has its own room. The kitchen's spartan and open and the furniture's all second-hand. Clint likes it, and likes the height; it's comfortable in the way a lot of things aren't. He kicks off his boots, strips off his socks and rests his feet on one of the couch arms. 

It takes a bit for Tasha to wash the curls out of her hair, strip the makeup off her face and scrub off whatever else is bugging her. Clint glances up when the shower quits and Nat comes out with one towel around her waist and the other scrubbing her hair. For the kind of lives they both lead and especially the one she led before they ever shared, the casual eye doesn't see a lot of scars - mostly testament to surgical and laser techniques that Clint knows still grate on her. Removing body-marks is too much like erasing other things, and that can make her squirrelly. 

On the other hand, she's not about to give up the kind of missions that would end up with some pretty awkward questions if she actually _looked_ like she got shot and cut up on a regular basis, so it becomes a hazard of the job. She already hates having to come up with something to explain the fifty-cal hole from The Mission Nobody Ever Talks About, and that one's had as much repair as the area can take.

Tasha just finger-combs her hair and then braids it back in something far more functional than decorative; she throws on a pair of worn combats and a black long-sleeve t-shirt over cotton undies and bra, an outfit that doesn't reject femininity or attraction so much as just ignores it. 

Then she pours herself a reasonable amount of vodka from her stash and stands leaning on the counter, staring into the middle distance. 

After a few minutes of that, Clint gets up and pours himself more beer, skipping the shot this time. He hooks one of the beat-up counter-stools with an ankle, sits, leans his head on one fist and says, "So?" 

"Getting to Stark meant getting past Potts," Tasha says, without inflection. Clint lets out a short breath of acknowledgement. He'd read those files, which pretty much painted Potts as Stark's soul-mate, assuming Stark actually had a soul. Clint couldn't figure out why in hell what looked like a competent, intelligent woman would put up with Stark's shit for years and years, but people were weird about what they'd do and who they'd do it for. 

God knows he knows that. 

"Buzz said it worked," Clint says. 

"Yes," Tasha acknowledges. She stares at nothing for a few more minutes, then looks at her glass, stands up and downs half of it, which is probably a criminal waste of good vodka, not that Clint can tell good vodka from bad, really. Nat pushes herself away from the counter and prods his shoulder with the fingers of her free hand. "Come on," she says. "I know you've got some kind of awful, shallow trash to watch somewhere around here." 

Reality TV is the secret vice of SHIELD, if only because once you spend a week working SHIELD cases and projects, ninety percent of fiction starts looking like ridiculous crap and there's only so much serious drama and indie films anyone can watch without going insane. Clint sets up the laptop to run renovation and home improvement shows, flicks on the monitor and then drops back onto the couch. Nat follows suit, taking the other side of the sectional's little L, leaning her back against the front of Clint's shoulder and folding her arms. 

They heckle everyone that steps on-screen, but because it's just house-centric crap, the heckling is good-natured rather than scathing or disgusted, with the occasional appraisal of a floor-plan for its defensibility. 

After a while, Nat says, "You're in New Mexico as of tomorrow morning." 

Clint sighs. "Yeah," he says. "I know. Coulson's got a bug up his ass about some potentially extra-terrestrial thing, I got the assignment five minutes before you walked in. You're in Kolkata, right?" 

"Some interested parties need to be discouraged from tracking Dr Banner," she confirms. Clint considers that for a while. 

"Pizza?" 

"If you go get it," Tasha replies, because they both have issues with giving any address out for delivery.


End file.
